Hypo-Alum toner - great for beginners!

Good evening boys and girls!

I had the need to add some warmth to my prints recently, but I could not have been bothered with mixing up selenium or other toner, nor I had the money for it. Then I stumbled on an old and somewhat forgotten recipe for a really nice sepia-ish toner (read on to learn why it is -ish), that everyone can make and use with ease. It is called hypo-alum toner and as the name tells, it consists of hypo and potassium alum.
Take some warm water, lets say 50 degrees centigrade, 750ml will do, and dump 300g of regular hypo in it. Shake and stir until it is completely dissolved. Then toss 25g of potassium alum in it and again, stir and shake until it is completely mixed in. The solution will turn milky and will smell of rotten eggs (not as badly as some describe) as the alum is decomposing hypo. This is normal.
The toner is now ready to use technically, but it acts as a strong reducer, so if you were to happen to dump it on a really good print, you would hate yourself for that since it would start to bleach it out. This is because the toner is not ripened yet and there are two ways to accomplish that:
- BRING FORTH THE SACRIFICIAL PRINT, meaning that you will toss some scrap prints and paper in it until the solution is saturated with silver and bleaching stops, shouldnt take a lot.
- Dump a gram or so of silver nitrate in the solution. Toner is ready to use right after that.
Also, it is said that addition of potassium iodide will make the tone warmer. I had none at my disposal so I used regular medicinal iodine, about 10-20 drops.

Now, the toning itself. The solution is best used warm. As warm as your prints can take. It can take hours upon hours to tone a print at room temperature, the goo is very slow working. I started at 50 degrees and had no tempering bath since my biggest tray was used for toning. You will see no changes at first but check in every 5 or 20 minutes, depending how warm the solution is.

The exact tone depends on the paper used - I tried 4 of them.
Slavich Bromekspress 1 turned purplish-sepia, quite pleasant and vintage looking.
Fotobrom turned yellow, not very pleasant but artistic.
Berjoshka (some soviet RC) turned the most beautiful chocolate brown, yet the shadows retained almost all of their blackness and density.
Fomatone RC warmtone turned also quite nice warm sepia-brown, with a small hint of purple in the midtones.

Attached are two samples. The first is Berjoshka scanned but the scan does the print no justice. It has far better tones when observed with eye. The second is a comparative shot of the Fomatone paper - before and after.


Great thing about this toner is that you dont have to be spot-on with the time, it takes time to work so you can relax and just check back on the prints periodically. Neither is there bleaching or other pre-treatment involved. And you don't have to take into account reducing or darkening effects of the toner, if it is seasoned. Go on, give it a shot!

VPooler said:

The solution is best used warm. As warm as your prints can take. It can take hours upon hours to tone a print at room temperature, the goo is very slow working. I started at 50 degrees and had no tempering bath since my biggest tray was used for toning. You will see no changes at first but check in every 5 or 20 minutes, depending how warm the solution is.

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I guess that paragraph explains why this toner hasn't gained much popularity. I have access to a fairly well equipped dark room and all the required chemistry, but heating my trays to 50°C for an extended period is simply not an option. Also, most toners must be matched to the photographic paper, and that is less than funny if each test run takes hours.

It can certainly be a lovely process. Haven't used it in some time, but have taught several classes using it and people loved the look

Rudeofus said:

I guess that paragraph explains why this toner hasn't gained much popularity. I have access to a fairly well equipped dark room and all the required chemistry, but heating my trays to 50°C for an extended period is simply not an option. Also, most toners must be matched to the photographic paper, and that is less than funny if each test run takes hours.

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You can see the tone after 20 minutes, even with trays cooling. Can take hours to reach full density. Still, some results are predictable i.e. with bromide paper you get purples, always.

VPooler said:

You can see the tone after 20 minutes, even with trays cooling. Can take hours to reach full density. Still, some results are predictable i.e. with bromide paper you get purples, always.

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I wonder whether whether there is some compound to speed up this process, so that it at least runs at room temperature. Sadly, after a lot of looking around, I have never found a credible explanation how Hypo Alum toning works, so I can't even guess whether it can be accelerated.

Rudeofus said:

I wonder whether whether there is some compound to speed up this process, so that it at least runs at room temperature. Sadly, after a lot of looking around, I have never found a credible explanation how Hypo Alum toning works, so I can't even guess whether it can be accelerated.

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I agree with you that getting the toner matched for paper can take a while and can be annoying, but once you nail it, you are good. I even like the slow acting effect, I can toss a few prints in and forget about them for a while, i.e. clean up darkroom and have a cup of coffee in the meantime. It seems to work good with Foma papers and those are only economically reasonable papers available here - a box of 50 sheets of 24x30 runs me some 28€ whereas Ilford MG is twice that.

Resurrecting this thread as I have only just discovered the formula etc for Alum toner and I like the colouration of some of the sample prints that people have posted on the net.

The amounts seem easy enough and the temperature required of the toner (= 50C) should be easy to obtain. It will be keeping the toner at this temperature for a good while, as stated, that might be the hardest bit, as I am likely to try and tone out of doors due to the mentioned smell.

So, has anyone used this toner of late? If so some feedback and samples would be great.

But also, there are only two ingredients, with one of them being hypo.

Question: Is the addition of hypo strictly necessary or could one just tone a print in the alum (after the toner has been ripened with some test prints etc.), rinse it and then put it in the normal fixer bath again, or does hypo HAVE TO BE added at the start?

Terry S

I have a small bottle of it that I made maybe a year or two ago, sitting in my garage. It does need hypo and I can tell you from experience that the part about adding "sacrificial prints" or some silver nitrate is not optional... I rolled up maybe a dozen scrap prints and stuck them in the bottle for a couple weeks. That wasn't enough. I tried to use it cold, by letting a print sit in it for several days, and it had a strong bleaching effect and not toning. Been meaning to add more "sacrificial" prints or some AgNO3 to it, but never got around to it. It looks like milk.

The hypo is essential as its decay creates the sulphur compounds that actually do the toning. A friend of mine has worked with this for a while before he moved to the much quicker, more flexible, easier and less smelly thiourea toner which can extremely easily be mixed at home as well.

Thanks for the comments guys.

I know about thiourea toner Koraks, but looking at some prints on the web that have been alum toned, to my eyes anyway, they look quite different in tone / colour when toned this way.

I suppose the only way that I will see if it is what I want is by trying, of which I will do when I have a bit of time.

Terry S

tezzasmall said:

... I know about thiourea toner Koraks, but looking at some prints on the web that have been alum toned, to my eyes anyway, they look quite different in tone / colour when toned this way...

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Truth be told, I haven't tried thiourea toning, but the tone can be varied by altering the hydroxide to thiourea ratio. The more hydroxide used, the warmer the image tone and vice versa.

I don't see the point of hypo-alum toner or similar toners rely on depleted thiosulfate content (nelson's gold toner works with a similar principle).
It takes too long to tone and toner has to be hot,toner emits dangerous sulfur dioxide which can also fog paper and film stored in the same place, and they bleach the prints so you have to compensate for it, also so much precipitate in bottles. Unpredictable shelf life in my case.

The work with thiourea toners is finished within minutes and no nasty sulfur dioxide smell. Tone can be controlled by varying amounts of thiourea and alkaline (carbonate or hydroxide). Also you can alter the halogen in the bleach for different colors. Use iodide or chloride instead of bromide.

@NedL: Potassium Alum is quite acidic, and in combination with Thiosulfate this will do the same thing as acidic fixer: it will Sulfur out. This is what you see as milkiness, and it happens even faster if your toner contains no Sulfite to protect the Thiosulfate.

@Anonymous: you can change image tone of Thiourea based toners by varying Sodium Hydroxide content, but you can go much further towards yellow by replacing it with Trisodium Phosphate, Sodium Carbonate or a Sodium Carbonate/Bicarbontate buffer. Color will be increasingly lighter yellow as you lower pH, and toning will take substantially longer.

@Herzeleid: I am aware of all kind of fumes which fog photographic materials, but I have not yet heard that Sulfur Dioxide would do this. Any chance you confused it with Hydrogen Sulfide, which is a powerful fogging agent?

@Herzeleid: I am aware of all kind of fumes which fog photographic materials, but I have not yet heard that Sulfur Dioxide would do this. Any chance you confused it with Hydrogen Sulfide, which is a powerful fogging agent?[/QUOTE]

Oh yes, it is H2S. It is emitted from these toners more as they age. Sulfur dioxide is released when they are mixed initially. Sulfur dioxide is not directly fogging but it will damage silver. Anything fumes sulfur is not good for film or paper storage.